


Helvegen

by meres_argias



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bad Ending, Hannibal's publications, M/M, Memory Palace Angst, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Strangulation, Switzerland, but kinda open, discussion of Vanishing Twin Syndrome, discussion of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 6,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6953245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meres_argias/pseuds/meres_argias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of season 3, Will and Hannibal try to make it work. 'Try' being the operative word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Will Graham dreams of dying every other night. Dying in the arms of a monster, having destroyed himself to take it down, while surrendering himself to him at the same time. It would have been the ultimate Pyrrhic victory, for both of them. It would have been comforting. He wakes up, instead, still wretchedly alive, with the monster, the man breathing evenly in the adjacent room. Will can feel Hannibal's consciousness filling the spaces between them like black ink in water. Theirs is exacty the sort of untenable, unreedemable situation that religious leaders had in mind when describing hell, or what awaits a life of wickedness. 

Those nights he wakes up and makes his way barefoot to Hannibal's room. 

"Have you come to kill me?" Hannibal asks, no tension in his body.

"No. Not tonight, Hannibal. Go back to sleep. I can feel your thoughts swirl around me."

"And what does that feel like?"

"Like I am cocooned, lying in wait. What are you thinking about?"

"I found my thoughts wandering back to Jack Crawford's late wife, Bella."

"What about her?"

"I gave her an unwanted second chance at life. I do wonder if her first death would have been more apt than the one that followed."

"Like with us, you mean?"

"Not quite. We still have the chance to be reborn."

Will shuffles closer and sits down on the bed over the covers. "Reborn as what?"

"The exact parameters, I suspect, will reveal themselves in time. In the meantime ..."

"You want me to join you", Will gestures beneath the covers "inside the womb?"

"I do."

"You are aware that embryos that share a womb occasionaly end up as one absorbing the other?"

"Ah, yes, the Vanishing Twin Syndrome. And which one would be you, Will? Are you going to absorb or be absorbed?" Hannibal asks with a flash of teeth.

"It doesn't make a difference. Either way, we are one."

Will slides under the covers, like going underwater. He is asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow and Hannibal's arms come softly around him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Graham goes to the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and commenting. :) I decided to change the narration into past tense - hope it's not too abrupt.

Will woke up with the first morning light a few hours later, and wordlessly slipped away. If Hannibal sensed it and if he was disappointed, he didn't show it. Will laced his boots and ventured outside.

The Swiss countryside was stretching around their little house in the valley, the mountain peaks surrounding them from all angles, some of them sharp and protruding like boxcutters. There was a lake for fishing nearby; and behind the house, Will could hear the soothing sound of a small waterfall. All things considered, this was the perfect place to lie low and wait for a resolution to the impasse of their lives.

Will was certain that merely waiting was not going to cut it, at some point he would have to take action, but he didn't feel ready. He had taken an action on the clifftop, one that he didn't regret, but the opportunity to die meaningfully was now gone. It would have been elegant and fitting if they'd died together after murdering the Dragon, but it wouldn't be elegant now, if Will smothered Hannibal in his sleep or set the house on fire with them both inside. He didn't believe that they had survived for a reason and that they were supposed to find it out, or, even worse, go on a quest for meaning, this was not a fucking yoga retreat. Still, if there was no redemption in being alive, they could at least find it in death. But not today.

The night that followed, when Will woke up confused and disappointed to find himself among the living, he didn't go to Hannibal's room. He took a small flashlight and made his way up the river instead. 

The way to the waterfall was steep and slippery and not entirely safe, but Will somehow didn't think that, after all of this, it would be a loose rock on a river bed that would make him add another wound to his collection. He was getting mud and little pebbles under his shoes and he needed to take care to avoid the tree branches, but he was getting closer. He had used to do this in the past, go for nightly walks surrounded by his dogs, often a little bit worried that they would get lost in the forest, but always finding they ran happily back to him, after investigating whatever it was that their dog souls had been drawn to in the dark. He had also gone for walks with Molly, holding out hands to each other and lighting the way, and he had been content, to have somebody walk with him into the dark and then return home. But she wouldn't have walked with him if she knew what he would end up doing, what he would end up forgiving. And while he had seen the local mountain dog breed, sturdy, friendly creatures that they were, he hadn't dared think that he could get a new dog now. He didn't deserve the fathomless devotion of a dog, when he was what he was.

He had been aware of these things intellectually, but something about the location and time made it all fall in place and regret hit him like a mass of rocks and earth sliding down from the mountain tops. He switched off his light and slumped down on the mossy ground. It was then, in the still of the night, in the pitch black darkness with only the sound of running water and his breathing and the phantom feel of dog fur under his fingertips, that Will Graham took off his wedding ring and allowed himself to mourn for the life that he had lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my mind, Will and Hannibal are hiding out somewhere around Walensee, Switzerland. It's a magical and secluded place.  
> 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal and Will try to negotiate a crucial aspect of their relationship.

The first months after the fall had passed in a haze.

Will was aware that he was alive, but emotionally he couldn't quite grasp it. He would retreat to his mind and find himself inside a big, empty stage. The play was over, the curtains long drawn, and it didn't matter what he did. He could get on the stage, click his heels to break the silence; he could walk around the aisles, thumb the backs of the chairs in the second row, pick up discarded programmes, put them back. He had moved on into an unquantifiable timeframe. What happens to the hero when he doesn't slay the monster, is not slain by him, but instead he sentimentally drags the monster out of the water and is in turn led around to the monster's various hidden properties in the New and the Old World? Interacting with the unobserved, the undocumented, the inconsequential, all the while, the parts of him that led to all this, carefully absent.

The morning after the night he had spent putting his old life to rest by the waterfall, he returned to their home with a slight cold, but also a grim determination set between his eyes. He might've forfeited his old life, but he'd be damned if he would just keep simply trudging on in this hell with Hannibal, where nothing changed and nothing was resolved, and ugly unspoken expectations lay in wait. Something would have to give.

Hannibal saw him come in the front door and greeted him with an even voice. "Good morning, Will".

Will looked at him and nodded. This was not the time for empty pleasantries.

"There isn't going to be another Dolarhyde."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me. Whatever you are plotting, or plotting to plot, to get me to kill somebody again with you or some shit like that, leave it be. It's just us now."

Hannibal's entire face tightened and something white hot pulsed in the air between them.  
"You're one to speak. Need I remind you that you orchestrated the death of an entire police squad, just to have your chance at getting rid of me by proxy? A chance you wasted."

"Are you.. are you seriously trying to one-up me because I didn't have the heart to actually kill you?"

"I am merely pointing out how indecisive you have been, and still are."

"Believe what you want. You want to have little chats on morality and murder and God and fucking Renaissance architecture, fine. I will have them with you. But this thing you do? Getting people's business cards to slaughter them later or creating trainwrecks of situations where murder and death are the only ways out? This is over, Hannibal. If my life is over, then yours is, as well."

Hannibal took a moment to process these words and then said, carefully: "You are so certain that without my influence, you'd never find yourself in those situations."

Will hesitated at that. "The old me wouldn't."

"The new you said it was beautiful."

"That doesn't mean it should be repeated."

Hannibal gave a curt nod at that, but his eyes did not ease up. "Understood."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Hannibal is still going to be committed to committing murder. But maybe he can be distracted or given something else he doesn't know he wants.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal employs a certain non murderous coping mechanism.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another smol update.

Following their strained conversation, Will went to his bedroom to lie down after his sleepless night. Hannibal watched him go up the stairs and then went to their alpine view living room to sit down on the sofa. He allowed himself to retreat inside his memory palace, passing by the room where he'd had his heart broken most recently. The soft evening light was filtering through from the half-opened door which led to an altered version of Will's old house in Wolf Trap. That room was getting to be one of the biggest rooms in the palace and right at that moment it was trying to expand inside the room dedicated to the clifftop. That was quite disconcerting, because the clifftop room had been Hannibal's refuge the past few months, reliving that glorious night again and again, to make up for the small fact that Will had closed up against him once more. He wanted to feel how he'd felt that night again, like there was no space between them. How would that come to pass, if Will was unwilling, at the time, to share a murder and a proper meal with him; what else could they do? 

Hannibal made his way to the palace's grand library, which was illuminated by chandeliers with heavy crystals hanging from them. He walked on the plush red carpet towards the bookcase adorned with a calligraphic 'C' and ran his hands along the spines of dusty, leather-bound books. He quickly found the one he was looking for and landed on a page with the following words:

 _We do not need to reveal ourselves to others, but only to those we love._  
_For then we are no longer revealing ourselves in order to seem but in order to give._  
_There is much more strength in a man who reveals himself only when it is necessary._

Hannibal closed the book with a sigh and neatly placed it back. Perhaps it was worth an attempt, to try and walk together with Will, into the room where his heart had been broken for the very first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you guess who the quote is from without looking it up?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal asks Will to help him.

Will was sleeping soundly in his room, face hidden in his pillow and turned away from the door. A shuffling noise, but before that, the brush of another mind against his own, made him stir and reach out mentally. Hannibal's consciousness mingling with his gradually awakening mind felt like submersion in a deep well, peaceful and languid, with the promise of hidden delights at the bottom. He could sense a presence or several, lurking deep inside the well, alien and inhuman, living outside time, singing for him. Will at that time, wanted nothing more that to sink down and be drawn into the well's enchanted core.

The longing faded to white as he became conscious of his surroundings, his bed, the book on his nightstand, Hannibal's soft inhales and exhales. Hannibal was indeed inside his room, but he wasn't standing tall and black and antlered, blocking the light, as he so often did in Will's nightmares, instead he was sitting on the floor next to the bed, hugging his legs to his chest, facing away from Will.

Will turned to him and spoke with something approximating softness.  
"Hannibal, you don't have to sit on the floor."

Hannibal didn't look at him then, chose to stare at the wall instead and said:  
"I am well aware my life is over, Will." Then, he faced him and continued "Do you want to know why I didn't snap your neck at the first opportunity after you tried to kill us both?"

"Because it wouldn't have been elegant?"

Hannibal shook his head, almost imperceptibly. "No, Will. I didn't kill you, because, against my better judgement, I am hoping to start a new life, with you" he said slowly, and then continued with a strange, wistful lilt to his voice: "There is still so much I want to show you, so much I want to learn from you."

Will blinked. "What do you want to show me, Hannibal?"

Hannibal reached for Will's hand with his own and laid it on his beating heart, Will's wrist in a soft hold. "I want to show to you, dear friend, the hall of my beginnings. And what lies beyond that, underneath the cracks on the floors. You are the only one that can go there." He squeezed Will's hand gently. 

Will tried to ignore the shiver that ran up his arm at that and asked: "What makes you think I'd go there with you?"

"If you do this with me Will, I promise to let what you said in the morning go, at least for a time." Hannibal slid his index finger underneath the black leather strap of the watch Will was still wearing when he'd collapsed into bed some hours earlier. He applied light pressure there, and Will's hand twitched, then stilled, as if pinned.

Will swallowed. "What does 'for a time' even mean with you? A day, a week, a year?" He didn't bother to hide the suspicion in his voice.

"As long as it makes sense, I suppose. I won't deceive you on a technicality, Will, don't worry about that."

"Won't you, though? Because it seems to me, getting people on technicalities and then laughing about it is what you excel at. 'Oh, I transferred my passion for anatomy into the culinary arts' et cetera, et cetera..."

Hannibal gave one of his tiny smiles at that accompanied by an almost inaudible chuckle and then looked at Will deeply in the eyes. "I do promise, Will."

Will stared at them both, his hand cradled against Hannibal's chest, Hannibal gazing at him from below, emanating nothing like the affronted tightness of the morning.

"No", Will said. "No trade. I'm going to do this with you because I want to." 

Hannibal's hold on his wrist tightened at that. He pressed a quick kiss to the side of it in reply, his nose and silvery strands of hair almost brushing the face of Will's watch and the tops of his knuckles, feather light and reverent. He then got up, nodded and simply left the room, leaving a slightly startled and dumbfounded Will behind to ponder what exactly he had agreed to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	6. Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Illustration for chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all I made an illustration for the previous chapter. Also posted on my [tumblr](http://meres-argias.tumblr.com/post/145654522576/hannibal-kissing-wills-hand-from-a-scene-in). Comments, likes etc are love.


	7. Chapter 7

Will stayed in bed for a little while longer. He could hear Hannibal move gently around the kitchen, preparing a meal. Soon, however, the staccato fall of raindrops from a sudden thunderstorm filled the room and drowned out every other sound. Will put his arms around his soft brown flannel shirt and shivered. He imagined the waterfall of the night before, cascading into the river below, violent and wild, carrying away the soil and the feeble branches until only the rocky foundations remained. It felt comforting.

Hannibal had made them an afternoon snack: an assortment of local cheeses adorned with dried fruit and fresh figs. Glasses of chilled white wine lay on the table to accompany the food, which they ate in silence. Hannibal had just started gathering their plates when the rain stopped, giving way to a sudden, eerie glow to their surroundings. At exactly the same time, they both rose up from their chairs, following an inner compulsion to walk towards the glass doors of the living room and look outside.

"I like how the post-rain world has sharper, brighter colors", Will said.

"Everything superfluous and unclean washed away, to reveal the raw beauty beneath", Hannibal agreed, taking his eyes off the distant mountaintops and gazing softly at Will.

Will held his gaze for a few seconds and decided to change the subject. "You know, if we set the idyllic vacation home and the local delicacies aside for a moment, I have to admit - I have difficulty believing you are not playing to win."

"Dear Will, I am only playing, in a sense, to yield something sharper and brighter, together with you, if I may borrow your words. I am in fact playing to lose, shed what I no longer need." Hannibal paused, satisfied and a bit surprised when he'd finished his sentence, as if he truly didn't know what would come out before he'd already said it. He traced his fingers on the glass separating them from the outside world and pressed on: "What about you, then?"

Will took a long breath and exhaled deeply, as if disappointed. "I ... I think I have only ever been playing to lose. Not with you, perhaps, with you it's always been different, but with everybody else. My empathy usually showed me a way to come out on top, but it felt too much like cheating to follow through. Most of the times I ended up doing the opposite."

"Or isolating yourself, instead of keeping up appearances."

"It's not that I didn't know how to keep appearances, I just didn't want to. I didn't make a game out of it like you did. You know this already."

"And yet, here you are now, talking in terms of winning and losing", Hannibal smirked.

Will sighed and look at him warily. "I told you, it's different with you. I do seem to come up with strategies to win against you, but they only end up devastating us both."

Hannibal nodded. "Leaving me to die in prison, waiting for you, while you went on with your life, was one such strategy that almost worked."

"For instance. Also when I decided to give us a swift ending at the clifftop."

"I would have accepted that."

"I am aware."

"But I won't accept it a second time. Our ending, whatever it may be, is to decided by bilateral agreement." Hannibal finished his sentence and looked at Will intently, standing very still.

"I do agree", Will found himself say, not unaware of how his answer made his conversation partner relax his stance. 

Hannibal was the one to change the subject this time. "In the meantime, there is no reason not to enjoy what our new living situation has to offer. What would you say if I proposed we travel to Zurich tommorow? "

"Does this have something to do with the favor you asked me for earlier today?"

"Not quite, no. Simply a day trip to stimulate the mind."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boundary setting, instead of trading murder tableaus? Murder idiots are growing up...
> 
> Okay folks, so this thing has a basic idea it is going towards, but the voices of the characters may sway me as I write it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Hannibal on a day trip. Now featuring a snippet from a comic page I am making for this particular chapter.

Will was roused the following day at some ungodly hour to catch the first train to Zurich, to make the most out of the already diminishing daylight hours. Hannibal seemed to be content not having his own car. Perhaps the Swiss transportation system was judged by him to be adequate. More likely, he had decided that if he couldn't get a Bentley which would immediately get traced back to him, not unlike his extravagant spending in Florence, he didn't want any car at all.

Hannibal had knocked on his door to wake him, startling him awake from a vague feeling of submersion in the now recurring well of his dreamscape. Will couldn't tell if the sorrowful presence he sensed reaching out for him at the pitch-black bottom was Abigail. He hoped not. Abigail had died so many times in her short, bright life, she deserved to have moved on somewhere beyond the reach of everybody who'd failed her, including him.

Thus it was like this, quiet, fatigued and more than a little caught up in the echoes of lost love and responsibility, that Will stepped out into the chilly October air with Hannibal by his side and made his way to the train station. They spent the ride in silence, seated across from each other. The scenery outside was so beautiful it made Will want to tear up. The bold treelines and misty mountain tops would cut right through him, if he let them.

“The play of light on clear, briskly moving water is, I find, one of the most beautiful sights in existence”, Hannibal said as the train crossed an elevated bridge over a small, turbulent river flowing into the same large, imposing lake that was accessible from where they lived. The water was green, and blue, and everything in between, in a state of constant motion and renewal. “Mathematicians and physicists have long struggled to formulate equations to accurately describe how a body of water can progress given initial conditions. The phenomenon is yet to be completely understood.” Hannibal didn't dare look into Will's eyes at that precise moment. Will nodded, keeping the information that he was in fact aware of the Navier-Stokes equations, if only superficially, to himself. 

“Perhaps it's better this way”, Will interjected. As much as Hannibal enjoyed impressing people with his well-rounded knowledge of the world, wide-eyed applause was not what he wanted from Will, and even if that were the case, that was not what he was going to get. “There are other ways to understand, than to dissect. I did my homework regarding where exactly we are, and I know that it is this very lake scenery that inspired Liszt to start composing his work, Années de pélerinage."

Hannibal raised an eyebrow at that - Will smirked - he was about ninety percent sure Hannibal was already aware of that particular tidbit of information and perhaps even had the vinyl to show for it. Too bad Will had stolen his lines, in that case. 

"That's right", Will continued. "The composer couldn't quantify how the rivers flowing inside the lake would move or how, precisely, the water would rise, but he could express what he felt, how his very being would sing and rejoice at the very sight of his surroundings. Listening to his work gives one a better sense of this place than any map rendition or simulation could do.”

Hannibal smiled. “Well done, Will. It seems even I need to occasionally be reminded there's beauty in simply observing.” Hannibal paused, going over the full meaning of what Will had said. “In fact, not just merely observing, but also honoring the feelings that arise from this observation in a way that is not destructive and does not aspire to ownership of any kind. I admit I find this difficult.”

“That's... an understatement”, Will gave him a rueful smile. That particular morning it was exceptionally difficult to not think of Abigail at every turn. He remained silent for the rest of the ride.

\---

Once in Zurich, Hannibal suggested they take a stroll through the park at the edge of the train station, which ran parallel to one of the major rivers going through the city. At the very entrance of the park, which led to expanses of green grass and high trees whose branches bowed and extended gracefully till they touched water, stood, unbelievably, as if welcoming them, the bronze statue of a stag. Will stared at it incredulously, which made Hannibal pause, as well. 

“Is something the matter, dear Will?”, Hannibal asked. Will had, after all, never shared the existence of the mysterious animal apparition with him.

“Not really, no.” Will shook his head. “Let's just go inside.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the composition Will is referring to: [Au lac de Wallenstadt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKqe75kfQCc). Would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will has a vision inside the park.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for drug use (not any of the main characters, but I thought this might be something to warn about upfront).  
> Also, yes, there really is a [stag statue](http://scrimshaw-globes.com/zurich/IMG_3404.JPG) at the entrance of Platspitz in Zurich.

Inside the park there was nobody. Will scanned the place to be sure and then let himself take a deep breath. Being able to be practically alone in nature, inside a city, was something he wasn't used to, coming from the States. They were surrounded by plains of well kept grass, and at a distance, a small circular bastion, open at all sides with a copper railing, elevated maybe one meter above ground, could be seen. Will could easily imagine how alive this place would be on a sunnier day, people sunbathing, eating ice cream perhaps, creating a colorful tapestry of towels, tablecloths and blankets on the vast green space.

“What do you see?” Hannibal asked, as they made their way towards the bastion.

“Mm.. I was just imagining how this place would look in the spring or the summer. “

“I imagine it to be quite the picnic spot”, Hannibal said.

“Yes”, Will said, climbing up the stairs up the bastion and looking at Hannibal from above. “Although, there is something...” he trailed off and laid his hands on the railing. The moment his palms touched the metal, the tidy, empty expanse around him disappeared and gave way to a vision. 

He clutched the metal bars tightly to keep himself upright and looked around to take in the altered surroundings. The park was bustling with life alright, but it wasn't the usual picnic crowd he had imagined. People were huddled together in clusters all around the grass, with blankets and supermarket carts and carton boxes and tattered mattresses – obviously building temporary settlements for themselves. Some of them were sleeping, out cold, wrapped in old coats or rags, others were moving around slightly in a very specific jittery way, that Will was only too familiar with. 

From his trailer trash childhood in Louisiana, to his days as a cop in New Orleans, he'd known the vacant-eyed, peaceful oblivion that heroine gifts to a person.

Will took the entire scenery in, the wooden counters that seemed to be the center of commerce, the individual spoons and needles kept as prized possessions, the broken furniture holding the makeshift settlements together, the wet cardboard and the bags of meager clothing strewn on top of it; he really looked and felt every single thing that the inhabitants of the park were feeling; the joy, the desolation, the freedom, the dead-end, the presence of community - he drank it all in. 

There was a young woman with long curly hair and almost missing eyebrows sitting by the river, warming up a spoon with a lighter, preparing for her shot. Will found himself unable to look away, his vision gradually and involuntary zooming into the very fibers of the dirty woolen socks she had on, inside of old athletic shoes that had been taped together. He focused on the dirty white of her socks and saw it, with relief, slowly morph into his own shirt cuff where he lay prone and slightly turned to his side on the grass.

The next thing he saw was Hannibal's shoes, as the other man knelt carefully above him, holding him but not crowding him. Hannibal, who had once again seen to it that Will was carried safely from a jagged to a softer resting place, while he dealt with the aftermath of the fun cinematic experience his mind had created.

“Have some water”, Hannibal said and produced a cool bottle of Evian from the depths of his travel bag. Will gulped it down obediently and shifted so that he was laying on his back, his hands covering his face.

“I can't believe it. This hasn't happened to me for a very long time”, he groaned.

Hannibal steadied him with hands lightly gripping his elbows and murmured softly:  
“Look at me, Will, please. Do tell me what happened.”

Will kept his hands where they were, but did let his body relax with the timbre of Hannibal's voice vibrating through him.

“I don't want to look at anything for a while, Hannibal. I just had a very detailed vision from what I'm guessing was an active drug scene in this very park a few decades back. I hadn't had a vision like this since I was a kid and not in control of my abilities; visiting war memorials with school, touching the wrong stone and ending up needing to get carried back home to Dad. Can you imagine what that was like? Did you know I used to wear gloves everywhere after? ” Will's voice was tinged bitter and hostile at the edges.

“They didn't know how entirely precious you were, Will. You don't have to avoid your gift anymore, at least not because of how others may perceive you. Do you truly find it this dreadful in itself to be faced with insight into the recent past?” Hannibal asked, still holding Will by the crooks of his elbows.

“In itself? I used to think it was, yes, now I am not so sure.” Will finally looked up to meet Hannibal's gaze through his hands and messy hair.

“Perhaps that's a question worth exploring, then. Tell me, what did you see?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am taking some liberties with how Will's empathy works - but if the show can show the pendulum stuff and not really explain it, perhaps I can get away with Will touching stuff and getting The Visions™? At any case we can just say this is a recent development or at least this particular ability is surfacing again after being dormant.
> 
> Also, there really was an open drug scene in Zurich in the 90s, somewhat tolerated by the city. The topic is vast enough to write a PhD about, whatever Will and Hannibal end up discussing about it, doesn't necessarily reflect my views, although I do try to use respectful language and treat the addicts as humans rather than a problem to be cleaned away.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Hannibal talk about his vision, and Will criticizes Hannibal's publications.

Will sighed and rose up from the grass until he was seated, and let the sound of the flowing river next to them soothe his frayed senses. 

“I told you, I saw this place as it was in the past. Recent past, indeed, judging from the clothing and the ubiquity of sealed bags of heroine lying around”.

“And how did you feel?”

Will shot Hannibal an exasperated look at that, but decided to go along with the impromptu patient-doctor spiel anyway. 

“Everything. It was... intense. I couldn't focus on a specific person, not really, so I ended up absorbing all their feelings. I don't know why the media calls them zombies, by the way, they do have feelings and lots of them.”

“What would you say was the overarching feeling you sensed?” Hannibal pressed on, looking intrigued.

“Hard to say. They weren't unhappy per se, and they weren't numb, but I suppose, they- they were alone.” Will concluded.

“Addiction can be isolating”, Hannibal said and Will could easily picture him saying those words in the same exact way to countless troubled youths with rich parents that had been delivered to his practice's doorstep. “The general population finds the perceived unpredictability of drug users unpleasant to bear and hence feels justified in banishing them to the fringes of society”. 

Will shook his head and chuckled at that. “I always did think you and Drs Kurzban and Leary did a rather lackluster job formulating a model about the causes of social exclusion. Celebrities can be unpredictable, but people worship the ground they walk on regardless.”

Hannibal looked a bit taken aback at the criticism of his scholarly credentials and was quick to voice his objections. “My colleagues and I clearly state the limitations of our model.”

“Do you, though? I seem to recall you clearly stating the limitations of _other_ models in comparison to yours, in that they don't accurately explain the stigma of obesity and then, to my amazement, I see you guys shoehorn in at the last minute, that your model also doesn't. I frankly wonder how that bit made it through peer review.” 

Will was smiling, grinning even. Hannibal smiled back. “Are you really interested in the inner workings of medical journal review processes or do you merely wish to, as one might say in the vernacular “knock me down a notch” ?” he asked.

“Wouldn't dream of it, Dr. Lecter. Just think of it as constructive criticism from one published professional to another.” Will let out a breath that sounded more like a laugh. “Somehow, I feel better already.”

Hannibal tilted his head to the right, seemingly both amused and slightly irritated. “If I may backtrack to the previous topic, unless of course you have more challenges specific to my body of academic work to level at me?”

Will waved his hand. “Go on.”

“Was it challenging to disengage from the vision and return to the present?”

“Yes," Will admitted, "it was. In fact, I am not entirely sure how I did it. I don't like to feel out of control like this.” Will felt his previous sense of power slowly dissipate into something different, something intimate.

Hannibal seemed to be similarly affected when he said, with eyes bright and reverent, “May I suggest that this is not a loss of control that you are experiencing but rather, an expansion of your abilities?" He continued: "You may be on your way to attaining all-encompassing empathy, an ability to understand human emotions deeply across different subjects and furthermore, across time.”

Will stayed silent for a few heartbeats as he pondered Hannibal's question. “You make me sound like a spiritual guide or a medium or something”, he said, as his eyes followed a brown duck floating happily downstream by the river.

Hannibal pressed on, insistent. “All your life, or at least for your entire professional career, you've been a blunt instrument for the use of others, and they chose to point you exclusively at criminals and ask of you to divine how they felt. I daresay this has been limiting your growth. You can do so much more, Will, and you're just getting started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The paper they are discussing is [this one](http://www.sas.upenn.edu/psych/PLEEP/pdfs/2001%20Kurzban%20and%20Leary%20psych%20bull.pdf), that is, an actual paper fictionally attributed to Hannibal Lecter by Thomas Harris. Like the obsessive Fannibal I am, I read it, I took notes and even perceived some flaws, so I am certain Will would, as well. Feel free to talk about the paper or what you thought of their exchange in the comments. We're on our way to super!empathy.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will snaps. It doesn't go over well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry. If it's any consolation, I cry-wrote this one.

Will tried to follow Hannibal's hopeful trail of thought. Excitement at Will's new abilities, the opening to mentor him through it, a new life for themselves. Opportunity. The chance to relive the past, vicariously. Will was now pretty sure that Hannibal's request to accompany him to the halls of his origins had to do with that. Hannibal wanted to use Will's gifts to deal with his own past. Still trying to fix the goddamned teacups.

Will felt his energy leak out of him completely and leave him pinned to the grass. His previous intellectual victory felt hollow and insignificant now. Hannibal was praising him for his gift, hoping to hone it for his own purposes. He was exalting him for greatness he did not want to possess, when so much lay unresolved between them. Hannibal, it seemed, had learned nothing.

His words came out as a sigh, the syllables crawling wary at the edge of his breath. "It's too late for this, Hannibal. Too late... What good is it to have extended abilities, if I'm to use them just for you? I can no longer do anything good and pure for this world. The only thing I can do is, perhaps, contain you", he said, all the bitterness he'd been holding in for months and maybe even years flowing out of him, like the river going downstream next to them. A river long ago poisoned with white powder, as a last ditch resort to keep the drugs from being discovered by the police.

Will continued as Hannibal remained silent and very, very still. There was something broken and open between them at last. "What good is any of this, when Abigail is long dead and buried with nobody left to visit her grave? When I don't deserve anybody's company, but yours... I wish I had never... that I'd never..." Will trailed off and swallowed audibly. He didn't want to finish his sentence.

"Say it." Hannibal had moved like a panther in his signature way to loom over him.

Will shook his head. "I don't want to say it." He tried to roll on his side, but Hannibal's hands were on his throat in an instant, holding him in place with his back on the grass, caressing his neck and then squeezing his windpipe. "I insist."

Will struggled in Hannibal's hold, his hands clawing at Hannibal's hands, wobbly legs trying to kick him off. He was still too dizzy and disoriented from his empathy episode from before for it to be a fair fight.

"No! If I say this now, we're through", he whispered.

Hannibal didn't laugh, although Will half expected him to.  
"We are never going to be through, in this life, or the next. I suggest you cooperate." Hannibal's hold on his throat tightened.

"No, no I won't!" Will croaked, as much as he could with Hannibal's strong arms crushing his windpipe. The situation was devastating, but Will felt he was getting his due. Hannibal's violence, he deserved. For not living up to his potential, for leading him on during all these years, for being a participant, almost there but never committed enough, for lying to him and trying to one-up him. Will coughed and tapped Hannibal's hands weakly as a last attempt to get him to release him and when this didn't have any effect, he resigned to just hold onto him, as an apology. As the oxygen was leaving his brain, he could find a small consolation in that, at least, this time, he was the only one left to bear the entirety of Hannibal's wrath.

Hannibal lifted him up slightly by the throat and regarded his no longer struggling form intently, with a mixture of fondness and disappointment. Will could feel his breath on his hair, his lips hovering just inches from his face. He felt close to passing out and what he expected to be his last conscious thought was a wish that Hannibal would kiss him just one time before killing him. As if reading his thoughts, or perhaps just as affected from the air of desperate eroticism which seemed to permeate their most violent shared moments, Hannibal lunged forward and placed his lips softly upon Will's, kissing him full on the mouth and sucking the remaining air out of him. Hannibal's measured tones came out with finality, then.

"I know you better than anybody, Will. All you've ever wanted was for somebody to see your darkness and not recoil in horror, find a way to help you see it as good and just, a necessary evil, to be wielded only in measured, regulated doses in order to contain a much greater one."

Will nodded feebly, seconds from passing out. Hannibal slackened his chokehold enough for Will to draw a few surprised, stifled breaths before continuing: "What you got, instead, was somebody who exposed to you the regulations and the lab conditions for the artificial constraints that they are. Somebody who freed you." Hannibal let Will fall unceremoniously to the ground and used the hands that were mere seconds before choking the life out of him to shake off small blades of grass stuck on his own pant legs. He straightened his pants, adjusted his cuffs and continued speaking, his voice steady but his eyes watering. He looked at his dear friend in sorrow, his dear friend who was right for him in so many ways but was still, after all this time, not ready to embrace and share himself completely. "Come back to me only when you can appreciate your gifts and mine for the divine blessings that they are" he said, in lieu of saying goodbye and then got up and left without bearing to take even a last look at Will.

Hannibal's footsteps disappeared slowly in the background as Will lay in the grass panting, trying to catch his breath, realizing for the first time what it felt like to have one's heart utterly, irrevocably broken. He wasn't sure exactly when Hannibal's presence was drowned out by the river flowing and the distant noises of the city unfolding around him, but he knew that he was gone, and that no running behind him could fix it this time. His whole being ached with the separation and he let himself cry with his face in his hands, devastated and abandoned and awakened, at the prospect of being alone in this life, with just a tiny sliver of hope for a reunion to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand that's a wrap! 
> 
> I don't know if I'm going to continue this verse because I don't know how to make their relationship work without compromising either of them. At least this time they're more mature and the split is less physically devastating. If they were to come back together, Will would first have to do a journey within himself and around the world (alone - think a bit like Emil being separated from Demian in Herman Hesse's book before he was ready to live with him), to discover the depths of his empathy without being constrained by the parameters of the FBI and his previous life, but also without being constrained by what Hannibal wants for him. Hannibal needs to absolutely give up on the idea that he can use/mentor Will in any way that Will isn't comfortable with (because of his terrible track record) and deal with his own shit himself (Mischa etc) and only then it could happen that Will helps him of his own volition.
> 
> Regarding what Will was trying to say before he stopped himself, you can find a clue in [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRM5hbhbyrs).


End file.
